WORD STUDY – STIFF NECKED
Exodus 33:3: “For I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: Lest I consume thee in the way.”
Stiff Necked – Hebrew: kasha oreph – Kasha: to be hard, stubborn, obstinate difficult.  Oreph: neck, to turn the back.
By the time this passage was written the children of Israel were two and half months into their journey (Exodus 16:1).  Traveling a direct route from Egypt to the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, is about 250 miles.  If they traveled 3-4 miles a day they should have arrived by this time. Instead God has some things to teach them before they could enter this land.  They had to be introduced to His mercy, grace, power, and they had to learn faith and to walk in faith.  But the people of Israel were not doing their homework, they were not proving to be the best students and God called them kasha oreph, still necked.
What is it to be stiff-necked?   Could you and I be stiff-necked?  This word is translated from two Hebrew words kasha oreph.  Kasha means to be hard or stubborn, difficult and obstinate.  As a former high school teacher I know how difficult it is to teach Shakespeare to high school students who just want to graduate, get out of school and start their vocation and enter their Promised Land.   I also know how difficult it is to teach Bible College students Classical Hebrew when they would rather just get on with their ministry enter their Promised Land rather than memorize declensions. Rather than accept academic discipline and learn to think, reason and concentrate all tools they would need to survive in the world and in ministry or on the mission field,  these students became kasha (stubborn, difficult, and obstinate).
The second word in “stiff-necked” is oreph which means “neck” but as a verb means to to turn back. Many times I had students who quit my Hebrew class and dropped out of school because it was too difficult, they oreph or turned back.
We know we will not reach our promised land over night, after all 250 miles through a desert is a long walk.  But we have our supplies, things are going quite well. There is that cloud by day and fire by night of God leading us.   We watched the Red Sea part, we watched our enemies drown.  We walked three days in the desert without water and just when it seemed all hope was lost, we arrived at Marah which had water only to discover that the water was poisoned.   We complained, who wouldn’t? But the Lord didn’t  rebuke us for complaining, He only went  ahead and freshened the water.  Then He led us to a place which had palm trees and more water than we needed. We got refreshed, firm in the knowledge of God’s care and guidance and ready to continue our journey to the Promised Land.
Then we found ourselves back in a desert, this time for sixties day.  Our food supplies were running out, the Promised Land seems further away than ever.  Once again we began to murmur.  Again the Lord did not rebuke us, He only does a greater miracle and sent manna from heaven and a supply of quail with these words “…then you shall know that the Lord has brought you out from the land of Egypt.”  Can you relate? Do you have a promise from God? Have you watched God deliver you with great miracles?  But like the people of Israel you are getting tired, you think you should have arrived at your promise by no,  but you just keep returning to that old difficult school of learning faith and trust in God. Many Christians reach the point of becoming stiff necked.
What is it to be stiffnecked?   I render these two words, kasha oreph, as “Having your head on backwards.”  We stop looking at God and His promises.  We stopped looking at the things we cannot see and preferred to look at what we can see, looking back to Egypt where there were no wanderings in a desert and depending upon God for our daily bread and water.  We look back at a time before we committed ourselves to God when things seemed better.
Has God given you a promise and you have waited and waited.  In the natural that promised should have been fulfilled long ago.  Your supplies are running low, you have no idea how much further it is to your promise.   Beware, the people in our story never received their promise, it was their children who did.   They did not enter the Promise Land because they were kasha oreph, they stopped looking to God and lost hope in their promise and started looking to the natural.  God could not fulfill his promise; he had to give it to their children.  God can not fulfill His promise in us when we allow ourselves to become kasha oreph, stiffed necked, looking to what we can see rather than what we can not see.

Subscribe to our free Daily Hebrew Word Study for in-depth commentary using Biblical Hebrew!

* indicates required